Is the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) dangerously alarmist? Does Consumer Reports magazine “use junk science to develop ‘sensational’ reports that advance the…extreme environmental positions” of its publisher, Consumers Union? Does second-hand smoke cause “no added risk” to people living or working with smokers? Are saccharin, formaldehyde insulation, pesticides, PCBs and bovine growth hormone […]
Americans may love their cars, but more and more of us are learning to love being car-free….
Toxic Trains May Be Rumbling Through Your Town * ITEM: In the pre-dawn hours of April 11, 1996, along railroad tracks one mile west of the rural Montana community of Alberton, four Montana Rail Link tank cars suddenly derail. The largest mixed chemical release in railroad history—and the second biggest chlorine spill—sends a plume of […]
Tobacco Growers Look Elsewhere to Save the Family Farm Dorothy Robertson has a friend who says “the best fertilizer in the world is the shadow of the farmer.” But the shadow falling over Robertson's farm, and those of 124,000 other tobacco farmers in the U.S., is that of Big Tobacco, and it's certainly not helping […]
The Family Behind Hip Clothier The Gap Logs the Redwoods Founded in ultra-hip 1969 San Francisco and named for the generational split that was then ravaging America, The Gap Inc. clothing empire has made billions selling once-egalitarian blue jeans as fashion items. Now some charge that The Gap’s founder/owners, the Fisher family, are selling out […]
Learning About the Planet at the Reborn Biosphere 2 While most college students were hanging out in the Student Union or cramming for exams, environmental science major Shannon Glynn was taking coral reef samples at the bottom of a 900,000-gallon ocean. A junior at Notre Dame in Indiana, Glynn was one of 50 college students […]
The Green Group For Busy People Shana Milkie was always an activist at heart, but the demands of fulltime motherhood kept her out of the loop. The Ann Arbor, Michigan resident says she “wanted to get involved, but I was nervous about it. I’d never written to a congressman, and I didn’t know how ordinary […]
Telecommuting is a High-Tech Energy Saver In what has to be considered a major change in American corporate life, more and more office workers are “commuting” in their bathrobes, moving from bedroom to home office to begin their work day. Telecommuting is a “no brainer,” right? How could it not be good that millions of […]
From America’s Dirtiest City to Its Greenest “Chattanooga,” proclaims a 1924 promotional brochure whose cover features artistically rendered belching smokestacks, “is a divine masterpiece in the making.” Unfortunately, the roaring fires of this industrial riverfront city came to symbolize something other than progress. By 1969, just before the first Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency […]
Undersea Noise Experiments Threaten the Sensitive Hearing-And Communications-Of Marine Mammals Finned marine mammals like these dolphins are especially sensitive to sonic disruptions. Anyone who has ducked beneath the surface of the ocean is familiar with the sensation. The screech of gulls, the laughter of children in the surf, even the distant whine of pleasure craft […]
